Family Outdoor Hour Challenge Archives

Posted on August 22, 2009 by Barb — Leave a comment

Pond Study: Fish and Insects

It was a pond study day for our family and we enjoyed spending some time at Grandpa’s house poking around in his pond. His pond is very low at the moment so it was easy to scoop up a tub of fish to observe.

We have been using a new critter habitat that has made our pond study so much more enjoyable. We also purchased a new net to do the actual collecting of samples and it has made a big difference in our success in catching these little guys as well as snails and aquatic insects.

My son loves to incorporate humor into his nature journal entries and since I consider the entries to be his own, I don’t say much about it. Actually, in creating the humorous illustration he is demonstrating his understanding of the web of life that exists in a pond ecosystem. How can I argue with that?

He did observe some dragonflies at the pond and he made this journal entry for his nature notebook.
Later on that day at our home, we found this damselfly in the backyard. We think it is a California Spreadwing but there appeared to be something wrong with this particular insect. I don’t know if it was old or if it had some other issue but it never did fly away.

If you haven’t had a chance before, read over the section in the Handbook of Nature Study on fish. The study of any fish can be done using the observation suggestions on pages 147 and 148.

“Almost any of the fishes found in a brook or pond may be kept in an aquarium for a few days of observation in the schoolroom. A large water pail or a bucket does very well if there is no glass aquarium. ”
Handbook of Nature Study, page 145

We will be taking a few more trips to the pond before the season is over. Boys and ponds….water and mud….just can’t beat the combination.

Here is the book we like to take along with us when we go to the pond. It has a little bit of everything discussed and so far it has been easy to identify the things we find at our pond. It is also a small pocket sized book that easily fits into your pocket or backpack.

Posted on August 21, 2009 by Barb — 6 Comments

Cotton Study: Our Family Outdoor Hour Challenge

The boys were not too excited about this study when we started but I persevered. We decided that we would read the pages in the Handbook of Nature Study together and then see what we find interesting about cotton plants. The whole discussion about cotton led to a thorough discussion about the role of cotton and slavery which I loved because it shows how nature study can be so much more than just nature study.

We can draw in art, history, geography, culture, and traditions.

We checked our clothing that we had on and of course we all had something made of cotton. My pants were a cotton/linen blend and my shirt was 100% cotton. The boys each had on cotton blend shorts and 100% cotton t-shirts. A little awareness goes a long way and we were soon finding lots of things made of cotton around the house. 🙂

Looking at cotton with a magnifying lens was interesting and they quickly sketched the view on their notebook page for their nature journal.

We would love to grow cotton here just for fun but I don’t think we have the right kind of climate. We remembered that we had seen some cotton plants when we visited Atlanta, GA at the living history museum….now that was some hot weather when we were there! Too humid for us West Coasters.

Our actual outdoor time was spent in the garden again. Here are some things we found interesting.

Green beans with their pretty purple blossoms.

Tomato blossoms still coming on the plants.

Garlic chives we need to trim….the flowers are pretty though.

Bells of Ireland in Amanda’s box. This is a new plant for our garden and it really is pretty.

So even though our inside preparation work started off a little slow, we really did enjoy learning about cotton and cotton plants. Our outdoor time was the highlight of the day and having a small garden to tend and nurture is a blessing and a refuge to us all.
Crop Plants Notebook Pages – Companion to the Crop Plants Challenges

Custom made notebook pages for each crop plant challenge. I have designed simple to use pages that will complement each challenge and will be an easy way to start a nature journal. Each of the eight notebook pages is in full color, but they are just as great in black and white. These notebook pages can be purchased for $2.50. View a SAMPLE

Posted on July 21, 2009 by Barb — 7 Comments

Beans! Outdoor Hour Crop Plant Study

We grow beans every year in our summer garden. There is nothing like freshly picked beans to complement a summer dinner. It is one vegetable that everyone in our family loves.

My dad is a big time gardener and he has a *ton* of green beans this year. He picks them every day and has a full basket. This is a photo of a part of his garden. In the foreground are his pumpkins, then zucchini, and in the way back…green beans and tomatoes. On the right side he has okra, chard, and eggplant.

You cannot see it in this photo but he has an electric fence around the garden to keep out the deer. He still had trouble with gophers so he had to dig up all his garden beds this last winter and put mesh in the bottom of every single box. The gophers still dig in the garden but they can’t get up into the veggies.

The variety of beans that we are growing, in the photo above, has a pretty little flower and the bean itself has a purple/blue tint to it. They don’t get as long as the beans we usually grow but they are tender and sweet

Speaking of a pretty flower…how about this eggplant blossom? My dad is growing a row of Japanese eggplant. I hope he shares.

He was willing to share this zucchini that became a monster. 🙂 I regularly get zucchini and green beans from him since his plants are producing earlier and with more vigor than those in my garden for some reason.

Our garden is a blaze with colors and it is such a joy to sit outside and enjoy all the growing things and blooming things. The gladiolas are not blooming yet…they are something new this year so I am anxious to see how they do.

We did not sow any bean seeds this week as part of the challenge but we did soak some and then cut them open and look at the parts. This was the subject of our nature journal.

Did you eat green beans this week? We did!

I wasn’t so sure when we started these Crop Plant Outdoor Hour Challenges that I was going to enjoy them, but now that we are into the study I think my whole family is learning more than we thought we would….focus, it is all about focus. 🙂

Crop Plants Notebook Pages – Companion to the Crop Plants Challenges

Posted on July 15, 2009 by Barb — 3 Comments

Clover…In Our Grass: Our Outdoor Hour Challenge

We have so much clover in our grass right now that this challenge was very easy! We also identified a new plant that we thought was a kind of clover, later determining that it was not clover but a kind of verbena. We definitely have white clover in our grass and the bees love it.

We didn’t have to wait long for the bees to show up when we were observing our clover plants.

The other plant that we found growing in our grass is Self-heal. (Thanks Diana for the correct identification on this plant.) The purple flowers are spiraled around the top of the plant. It is growing right alongside the clover and grass.

We tried to observe the nodules on the clover root, but we were not very successful. I think we need to find a place where the ground is softer and we can really dig up the entire plant. Perhaps we can pull out the magnifying glass as well and look closer.

We dug up a self-heal plant as well and compared the roots, stem, and flower to that of the white clover.

The boys started the suggested clover study from page 598 (number 5) in the Handbook of Nature Study and recorded the first day on theirCrop Plants Notebook Page.

“The clover head is made up of many little flowers; each one has a tubular calyx with five delicate points and a little stalk to hold it up into the world. In shape, the corolla is much like that of the sweet pea, and each secretes nectar at its base. The outside blossoms open first; and as soon as they are open, the honey bees, which eagerly visit white clover wherever it is growing, begin at once their work of gathering nectar and carrying pollen…” Handbook of Nature Study, page 597

We have seen other kinds of clover over the last few months and once you can distinguish its appearance, you start to see clover all over the place.

Crop Plants Notebook Pages – Companion to the Crop Plants Challenges

Posted on July 3, 2009 by Barb — Leave a comment

Gray Birds: Our Outdoor Hour Challenge

The last of the bird challenges has arrived. For our family, this series of challenges has helped us become more aware of the birds around us at all times. We also have all become more adept at using our Peterson Field Guide. Every week we have spent some time quietly observing birds, admiring their various colors, shapes, and behaviors.

This week’s challenge to learn about gray birds taught us more about the pigeons we see in our neighborhood. We have a flock of pigeons that live in our town on an overcrossing and there are always pigeons hanging around at our grocery store parking lot. Someone throws out bird seed for them on the pavement and they flock there to have a meal.

My daughter Amanda has a phobia about pigeons. She avoids them at all costs. Pigeons are not my favorite bird, but I have come to appreciate them more through our reading in the Handbook of Nature Study.

“For an out-of-doors exercise during recess let the pupils observe the pigeons and tell the colors of the beak, eyes, top of the head, back, breast, wings, tail, feet, and claws. This exercise is excellent training to fit the pupils to note quickly the colors of wild birds.”
Handbook of Nature Study, page 52

No mockingbirds this week….we will keep our eyes out for this interesting bird and its songs.

We also spent some time discussing as a family how we don’t have as many birds in our yard and feeders during the summer as we do during the winter. In the winter, our list of feeder birds is really long. Yesterday we observed at our feeder to make a comparison.

House sparrow
Titmouse
Hummingbird
Western scrub jay (also in the bird bath)
Goldfinch

Comparing the lists is amazing….we must have a lot of migratory birds in our area since they must leave to go north once the winter is over. Looking at the maps in the back of the Peterson Field Guide have been very helpful in knowing just where our birds migrate to and from….so interesting.

We found this coloring page on Enchanted Learning and thought it was helpful.
Rock Dove (Pigeon)

We also found this explanation helpful from the Peterson Field Guide.

“Pigeons and Doves. Plump, fast-flying birds with small heads and low, cooing voices; they nod their heads as they walk. Two types: 1. birds with fanlike talkes (Rock Dove or Domestic Pigeon); 2. smaller, brownish birds with rounded or pointed tails (Mourning Dove).
Peterson Field Guide (W) page 208

This was a great way to end our bird study. Of course, we will always be on the look out for different birds to add to our life list in our nature journal.

Posted on July 2, 2009 by Barb — 2 Comments

Raccoon Study: Outdoor Hour Challenge for Mammals

This post is long overdue. As I was going through all the past challenges, I realized that I never posted our study of raccoons.

In our neighborhood, we have raccoons. Big raccoons for the most part. They always surprise me when I see them because they are large, curious looking animals. We have had them look in our windows and french doors at night with their shining eyes. We have had them sit in open doorways and look in at us. They have been known to carry away whole bowls full of cat food. I had a big Tupperware container filled with catfood on the back deck and they would come at night and remove the cat food, carry the pieces over to the water dish, and proceed to wash the food and then eat it. We could see their hand prints on the deck and around the bowl. They are clever creatures indeed.

Last summer Mama Raccoon would bring her young ones in the middle of the night to climb the trees just outside our bedroom window. You could hear them making noises in the dark as they played and climbed. I am not positive but I think they would go up the tree and eat the seeds from the pods from the magnolia tree. They would rustle around in the limbs of the tree and if you shone the flashlight out there, their eyes would reflect like glass.

Here is a notebook page that Mr. B made for his nature journal about raccoons.

If you can’t read the bottom I will type it here for you to read. It makes me smile.

“One of the most adaptive mammals ever, the raccoon can make a living almost anywhere. Eating nearly everything it can put its hands on, raccoons aren’t ones to be starved easily. Some live eating grubs and fruit, but the majority of these sneaky thieves steal pet food, bird seed, and any valuables it could pawn off later for a good price. When caught in the act, they will climb the nearest tree and flaunt their invincibility by falling asleep up there. Guard dogs will do next to nothing because they will fight with ninja-like prowess when cornered.”

Funny.

This time of year our chances of seeing and observing a raccoon are very high. I hope we see one again soon.

Posted on June 10, 2009 by Barb — 1 Comment

Black and White Birds: Our Family’s Outdoor Hour Challenge

We were hoping to observe some birds from this challenge but we never had an opportunity come up. We will have our eyes out for a woodpecker, a nuthatch, and a towhee. We have heard plenty of woodpeckers and towhees out in the woods as we walk, but they never come close by and let us have a good look for this challenge.

Spotted Towhee

We have seen some birds to note here on the blog. We saw our very first ever grouse when we were out today. After our encounter with the sound of the grouse at Yosemite last month, we were prepared when we saw a grouse here locally. I did not have my camera so there is no photo but here is a link to the kind of grouse that we saw:
Grouse

We also saw a group of Canada Goose this past weekend. I think they sort of qualify as black and white birds. Don’t you?

We also saw these ducks.

In the Handbook of Nature Study it says to study the goose and the duck and compare them. The questions in the lesson have you comparing different features of the duck and the goose like their beaks and feet.

We made a journal entry showing different kinds of bird feet. This was an interesting sketching assignment and we had to work carefully from the images on this website: Bird Feet.

Although we didn’t see any woodpeckers, we did see evidence that there are some nearby.

This is a tree that the acorn woodpeckers have made holes in the bark and then stuffed acorns in for future meals. Here is a better look at the acorns.

Amazing that they make the holes just the right size.

This is what the AllAboutBirds website says about the Acorn woodpecker.
“All members of an Acorn Woodpecker group spend large amounts of time storing acorns. Acorns typically are stored in holes drilled into a single tree, called a granary tree. One granary tree may have up to 50,000 holes in it, each of which is filled with an acorn in autumn.”

We come across these granary trees quite frequently in our area.

Here is a photo of a white-headed woodpecker that I took last summer at Yosemite.

He was not shy and we had a great time watching him work.

Although we were not successful in spotting this challenge’s birds, we did take quite a bit of time to look for, listen to, and learn about the birds in the challenge.

Posted on May 28, 2009 by Barb — Leave a comment

Brown Birds: Our Outdoor Hour Challenge

The house sparrow and the mourning dove are our constant companions. The song of the mourning dove is easily recognizable and we have a pair that perch in a certain spot on the telephone wires around the corner from our house.

We have several kinds of sparrows in our yard but the most prevalent is the white-crowned sparrow. In the winter, we have scores of white-crowned sparrows that come to our feeders every day. They prefer the platform feeder or to clean up under the birdfeeder…aren’t they helpful?

The other brown bird that we see in large numbers at certain times of the year is the cedar waxwing. I especially like this bird for some reason. It reminds me of a brown cardinal and is easily recognizable by its set of field marks. We had a flock of around sixty cedar waxwings in our tree one time and it was so much fun to watch them.

“Birds do most of their singing in the early morning and during the spring and early summer months.”
Handbook of Nature Study

Another brown bird that we have in our neighborhood that we can recognize by its call is the California quail. This bird has an easy call to remember…he says “Chi-ca-go!” Click the link to the Cornell site and you can find the button to hear his call.

The California quail is our state bird and in our area they are abundant. We enjoy watching this bird scurry along the ground with his top feathers bobbing up and down.

By the way, have you noticed that Cornell’s bird site has been updated and improved? I am loving the new look and the organization of it so much better. They provide such a great service to all of us amateur birders.

Okay, one last brown bird (at least the ones I see are mostly brown) that we have a lot of in our area. The wild turkey is not the most beautiful bird in the world. The photo on Cornell’s website actually makes him look quite elegant but in real life the turkeys we see are scrawny, blue faced things that usually end up in the middle of the road trying to look elegant. The males will fluff out their feathers to impress the ladies from time to time but for the most part the wild turkey is just a nuisance to the rest of us.

I think that about wraps our brown birds for this challenge. We have a few more but this entry is already too long. I will save the other birds for another time.

If you can find this book at your library or purchase it used on Amazon.com, you find it is a great beginner’s book on birds. It is a picture book and each page is a watercolor painting of a common bird with its name. I would definitely use this book with preschoolers or grammar stage children.

We have this little guy on the shelf in our living room. Frequently someone will get him down and play his call. He happens to be my favorite of all the Audubon plush birds.

Posted on May 26, 2009 by Barb — 1 Comment

To The River We Go On A Hot Day!

We took a hike to the river today because it was *hot*!

Twenty minute drive, 1.2 mile hike and then we were at the river.

Since I am tired tonight, you will get a photo essay instead of a lot of words. 🙂

Mr. A brought his bike and decided to take the scenic route….up the hill, across the ridge, and then down to the river.

We took the old ranch road which is much more direct…..no trees but a shorter distance.

You can’t beat this landscape of flowers and green grasses.

We made it to the river and there were lots and lots of river rafters coming by the whole time we were there. Many of them were wearing wetsuits since the water is still ice cold. We sat, watched, and waved as they paraded by in their rubber boats. Some of us took off our shoes and dipped our toes in to cool off. The sun was hot, the water was cold, and we had a glorious time sitting on the rocks.

There were a few kayakers as well.

Even Kona enjoyed watching the boats. One boat had a dog with a lifejacket on and Kona thought maybe she would like to go down the whitewater in a raft. We have a raft but we have not taken it out in some time. Hmmmm…..

Wildflowers were still to be found along the banks of the river. I think these are some kind of aster.

As the afternoon progressed and we made our way back up the hill to the trailhead, we again saw the thunderclouds building up over the Sierra.

There was some complaining about the heat on the way back up to the car…Okay, so it was me whining about the heat. 🙂 It was not only hot but it was humid as well which makes it even worse and that combination always makes me cranky. We had ice cold drinks waiting in the car so that helped my mood just thinking about it as I hiked those 1.2 miles back up the hill.

Hope you had some outdoor time this weekend. We enjoyed every minute of ours.

Posted on May 25, 2009 by Barb — 3 Comments

Cascade Falls: Getting Away From the Crowds

This weekend we took an afternoon trip to hike up to a waterfall. If you read my post about nature study in ripples, we were rippling out about an hour’s drive from our house and then hiking up one mile into the Desolation Wilderness.

The challenge on this afternoon was to find a place to park. We actually had planned on hiking to a different waterfall a few miles down the road but there were no parking places. Not only were there no spaces left, but all available space alongside the narrow highway was filled. We were disappointed but determined. I love the age of cell phones. We found a place where we had cell coverage and phoned Amanda. She had opted to stay home on this particular afternoon and she was happy to look up an alternate hike for us in the area. She picked a good one and we were able to find a space at the trailhead of this hike after waiting a few minutes for someone to leave.

Here we are hiking down the trail. We were so surprised after seeing all the cars at the parking area that we did not see but a handful of people on the trail with us. Sigh, fresh air and space.

This was our goal, a series of cascading waterfalls. This part of the trail is along a steep ridge with very uneven rocks to hike up. You do not want to lose your concentration on this part of the trail.

The thing about hiking in the high country over big slabs of granite is that sometimes you have to be very observant in order to know which way to go. Someone was very helpful and left this line of rocks that pointed the way to the next section of the trail. We could hear the waterfall by this point so we knew the general direction but it was nice to have confirmation.

Success! Here we are at the top of the waterfall. Springtime is such a great time for waterfalls. My hubby and I sat on a log and just soaked in the sounds and the sights while all three of our sons scrambled and hopped and climbed up over the boulders and up the waterfall.

This photo was accompanied by me hollering a stream of warnings.

“Don’t fall in the water.”
“You don’t have extra shoes.”
“Rocks are slippery when they are wet.”
My personal favorite, “If you fall in, I’m not coming in after you.”

Someone always has to go higher than someone else. No names mentioned.

Something that happens in the high country at this time of year are afternoon thundershowers. We had checked the weather before leaving for the hike and it had warned of possible thunderstorms moving in late in the afternoon. We kept our eye on the horizon as we hiked and the clouds did build up a little at one point but no storm on this afternoon.

The lichen on the rocks was so beautiful. The color really stands out on the granite.

This is a really bad photo (taken into the sun) of my boys climbing up a dead tree. This area looks as if it received quite few lightning strikes in the past because of all the single burned trees. It is very exposed and on the east side of the mountain and I really would not want to be up here during a storm. The boys enjoyed the view from up their tree and wanted me to take a photo of them.

At this elevation and at this time of year, there are not too many wildflowers. We did see this one growing in the cracks of the granite in a few places. The splash of green with the white and yellow flowers amidst all the grayness was a delight.

Here is one of the trail markers. For some reason we didn’t find this one very helpful, although we knew we had not strayed too far off the trail.

We had a great afternoon and were home in time to grill some burgers. I will confess that I was not in the mood to hike on this afternoon and wanted to stay home but the boys wanted to “do something”. I know they are just wanting to get out when they suggest a hike because they know that I rarely turn down an opportunity to hit the trail.

Thanks boys for encouraging me to get outside and experiencing this amazing spot so close to home.

Tag: Family Outdoor Hour Challenge